Gosuke Oyama

A 3.8-V earth-abundant sodium battery electrode.

Rechargeable lithium batteries have ushered the wireless revolution over last two decades and are now matured to enable green automobiles. However, the growing concern on scarcity and large-scale applications of lithium resources have steered effort to realize sustainable sodium-ion batteries, Na and Fe being abundant and low-cost charge carrier and redox centre, respectively. However, their performance is limited owing to low operating voltage and sluggish kinetics. Here we report a hitherto-unknown material with entirely new composition and structure with the first alluaudite-type sulphate framework, Na2Fe2(SO4)3, registering the highest-ever Fe3+/Fe2+ redox potential at 3.8 V (versus Na, and hence 4.1 V versus Li) along with fast rate kinetics. Rare-metal-free Na-ion rechargeable battery system compatible with the present Li-ion battery is now in realistic scope without sacrificing high energy density and high power, and paves way for discovery of new earth-abundant sustainable cathodes for large-scale batteries.

Magnetic Structure and Properties of the Rechargeable Battery Insertion Compound Na2FePO4F

The magnetic structure and properties of sodium iron fluorophosphate Na2FePO4F (space group Pbcn), a cathode material for rechargeable batteries, were studied using magnetometry and neutron powder diffraction. The material, which can be described as a quasi-layered structure with zigzag Fe-octahedral chains, develops a long-range antiferromagnetic order below ∼3.4 K. The magnetic structure is rationalized as a super-exchange-driven ferromagnetic ordering of chains running along the a-axis, coupled antiferromagnetically by super-super-exchange via phosphate groups along the c-axis, with ordering along the b-axis likely due to the contribution of dipole-dipole interactions.

Particle‐Size Effects on the Entropy Behavior of a LixFePO4 Electrode

The particle-size effects on the thermodynamic properties and kinetic behavior of a Li(x)FePO(4) electrode have a direct influence on the electrode properties. Thus, the development of high-performance Li-ion batteries containing a Li(x)FePO(4) cathode requires a complete understanding of the reaction mechanism at the atomic/nano/meso scale. In this work, we report electrochemical calorimetric and potentiometric studies on Li(x)FePO(4) electrodes with different particle sizes and clarify the particle-size effect on the reaction mechanism based on the entropy change of (de)lithiation. Electrochemical calorimetry results show that a reduction in particle size shrinks the miscibility gap of Li(x)FePO(4) while potentiometric measurements demonstrate that the Li(x)FePO(4) particles equilibrate into either a kinetically metastable state or a thermodynamically stable state depending on the particle size.

Sodium manganese fluorosulfate with a triplite structure

The crystal structure of the NaMnSO4F fluorosulfate phase prepared by low-temperature solid-state synthesis has been solved and refined by the Rietveld analysis of synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction data. Isostructural to the naturally occurring triplite family of minerals, this compound crystallizes in monoclinic C2/c symmetry (No. 15) with unit-cell parameters of a = 13.77027 (17), b = 6.63687 (8), c = 10.35113 (14) Å, β = 121.4795 (3)° and V = 806.78 (2) Å(3). Its structure is built of edge-sharing chains of distorted MO4F2 octahedra, which are interconnected by constituent SO4 tetrahedra to form a robust three-dimensional polyanionic framework. MO4F2 octahedra are randomly occupied by Na and Mn with close to 1:1 occupancy. This random mixing of cations among polyhedral building blocks means that there are no channels for Na-ion conduction, rendering it electrochemically inactive. The structure is discussed and compared with other known alkali metal fluorosulfates as well as to naturally occurring triplite-type minerals.